


There's This Thing I Do (It's Called Loving You)

by nutalexfanfic



Series: Clexa Week 2017 [2]
Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Adoption, Alternate Universe - College/University, Angst with a Happy Ending, Attempted Sexual Assault, Childhood Friends, Date Rape Drug/Roofies, Enemies to Lovers, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Happy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-28
Updated: 2017-02-28
Packaged: 2018-09-27 10:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 6,422
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10011560
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nutalexfanfic/pseuds/nutalexfanfic
Summary: Clexa Week 2017 Monday - Enemies to Lovers.It's heavy, but I hope you like it. Please note the trigger warnings below.tw- attempted sexual assault - very brief mention in Chapter 3. (Cues are in the notes on Ch. 3)tw- lots of grieftw- adoption grief





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The the poems used in this fic are: 
> 
> "Songs of Myself," Walt Whitman
> 
> and
> 
> "Annabel Lee," Edger Allen Poe

 

“I could literally throttle her.”

 

//

 

This wasn’t the first time Clarke had fantasized about murder. Though it was perhaps one of the few times she’d actually meant it.  It’d been three in the morning, pitch black and cozy warm in her cocoon of blankets, and she’d been right on that blissful precipice of sleep.

 

And then, for the fourth time that week, the door had flung open, her roommate had rushed out, knocking over god knows what on her way, and Clarke was left wide awake, blinking at the ceiling while she tried to remember what a normal heartbeat felt like.

 

//

 

“You should probably just tell her, Lexa. It’s not like she’s unfamiliar with the subject.”

 

//

 

Not for the first time, Lexa looks at her sister like she’d lost her god damn mind.

 

//

 

There was no particular day Clarke could pinpoint the implosion of their friendship. No special occasional or calendar date to remember it by.

 

More accurately it’d been a series of occasions, a smattering of calendar dates that tumbled one after another until neither of them could really manage to stand each other.

 

Perhaps it’d started with middle school. Perhaps Lexa had been right to say that Clarke had changed for the worse and was hardly recognizable with her fake friends and her fake smiles and her fake face.

 

But Lexa had changed too. Lexa, who once couldn’t hurt a fly. Lexa with her big, green eyes and her shy smile, standing against the chain-link fence at recess like it was all just a little too much for her tiny self. Lexa who’d blossomed with Clarke’s friendship into her brilliant, slightly neurotic but beautiful, self.

 

Lexa who turned fourteen and suddenly stopped smiling. Lexa who threw glares and spewed vitriol at anyone who wandered too close. Most viciously at Clarke. Lexa who got in fights, who spent more time out of school then in it by the time they were in high school. Lexa who still graduated early and left Clarke to fend for herself.

  
Lexa who never even bothered to call when Clarke watched strangers put her father into the ground.

 

Yeah, Lexa had changed too.

 

//

 

“I don’t understand why you just don’t get a room change,” Octavia mentions that day at lunch. As if Clarke hadn’t already thought about it. As if Clarke hadn’t already filed the request, met with the Student Life Coordinator, _and_ bargained her life away with the RA when the previous had denied her.

 

“Tried. System hates me.”

 

“Try again?”

 

With an exaggerated sigh, Clarke raises up from the table and glares. “They said I don’t have enough cause. Apparently, ‘I hate her fucking guts’ isn’t a good enough reason to get a roommate switch.”

 

“You have to admit it’s kind of funny,” Raven pipes up, ignoring the look of poison Clarke shoots her. “Like, in what world do you and Lexa not talk or see each other for two years and then you end up roommates when you get to college.”

 

Clarke chucks a raisin as hard as she can at Raven’s face. She misses by a good several inches, but she’ll just chalk it up to sleep deprivation if anyone points it out. “The better question is in what world does a junior still live in the dorms. Shouldn’t she be off brooding in an apartment somewhere with her mellow dramatic collection of candles?”

 

“Maybe she likes the camaraderie.”

 

She doesn’t _literally_ choke on water, but she comes pretty damn close. She snorts. “Lexa wouldn’t know the meaning of camaraderie if it slapped her in the face.”

 

//

 

Clarke does this thing, from time to time, where she shoves her foot so far into her own mouth it’s a wonder she’s able to ever talk again.

 

//

 

When Octavia and Raven just stare at her awkwardly, sometimes looking behind her, sometimes looking away, she knows this is one of those times.

 

//

 

Lexa does this thing from time to time, where her usually angry, condescending, annoying judgmental face turns to something more like pain and sadness, loneliness and some kind of generic suffering.

 

When Clarke turns around, and sees Lexa’s face, she knows it’s one of those times.

 

//

 

She closes her eyes for a split second in an attempt to try to forget the way Lexa’s wide green eyes remind her so much of the ones on the scared little thing she’d found pressed into the fence on the first day of kindergarten recess.

 

When she opens them though, she remembers she can never really forget.

 

She sighs. It’s too early in the day for this weird, complicated thing she and Lexa have. This hatred that burns a little hot and a little to deep and little bit too much like something that’s not hatred at all.

 

//

 

“Lexa—hey.”

 

She watches as Lexa’s eyes flicker between the group at the table. People she once knew. People she once dared to call friends. Good friends. Best friends, even. (Though that was something she only ever called Clarke. Once, out loud. In the middle of a thunder storm, pressed into Clarke’s warm back.)

 

She doesn’t mean to be an asshole, but there’s this thing she does, from time to time. When the waiting and the watching and the sadness of it all makes her uncomfortable and impatient and angry. She hardens until she’s brittle. And then she snaps.

 

“Did you need something?”

 

//

 

It’s a little amazing to watch the way Lexa can traverse emotions; like an Olympian on a ski slope, slipping from open and sad and vulnerable to angry and harsh and down right terrifying.

 

Lexa had read her part of a poem once from a book she’d gotten out of the middle school library. Whitman. Just that alone was enough to dazzle Clarke who was still stuck in elementary school, feeling like a child in Lexa’s auspicious presence.

 

Clarke had chuckled at her when she read it—her gangly, limps and wild hair and glasses too big for her face all wrapped up in a blanket on her bed. Reading years beyond either sets of their peers and scaring Clarke with the stirrings it caused inside of her. She said Lexa sounded funny.

 

Really she had chuckled because Lexa made Clarke uncomfortable in that warm, wonderful kind of way. She had chuckled because Lexa contained more multitudes than Clarke could ever hope to understand.

 

And it made her magical.

 

//

 

_Do I contradict myself?_

_Very well then I contradict myself;_

_(I am large, I contain multitudes.)_

 

//

 

Lexa hands her a coffee, looking mildly annoyed when Clarke just stares at it. “I wanted to apologize for waking you up again last night.”

 

“You wanted to or you are?”

 

For a split second, Clarke thinks Lexa might squeeze the cup of coffee so hard it’ll explode spewing hot liquid all over them.

 

Instead she watches that shift happen, effortless and cool and practiced. Lexa’s eyes grow dark and her lips set thin and taught. That little bulge pops out of her jaw and for a second, Clarke worries for her safety.

 

“Do you want the latte or not?”

 

“I don’t like coffee,” she snaps.

 

Lexa looks at her, _really_ looks at her, and for a moment Clarke prepares herself to be yelled at.

 

Instead, Lexa’s voice is quiet and reserved when she speaks.

 

“It’s lilac-infused. Though you might like it.”

 

//

 

Clarke stares so long, so hard, she barely notices when Lexa rolls her eyes and places it on the table for her.

 

//

 

She’d told Lexa once, when she’d cornered Lexa in the parking lot after her graduation—yanking herself out of her robes and tumbling into her rusty, red pick-up, cursing the world—that she missed her.

 

She told her that she missed their hushed conversations under the covers with the flashlight, so serious in their pre-teen minds. She missed Lexa’s hugs and her laugh and the way she always had something new and magical to show Clarke about the world.

 

Most of all she told her how she missed the way her pillow always smelled faintly like flowers after Lexa spent the night. Told her the scent made her feel safe. Told her that after her father died, she’d spent hours roaming stores looking for that rare but distinct smell that was the only thing that kept her from hurting so hard she sometimes puked.

 

She told her that sometimes Lexa passed her in the hallway, she caught a whiff of that smell, and it made her ache for time when they didn’t hate each other.

 

She told her she never did figure out what the scent was. She asked her if maybe she could tell her. 

 

//

 

Lexa had gotten in her trunk and started the engine.

 

Clarke had walked away feeling like a moron.

 

//

 

The next day, the sound of a truck’s backfire in front of her house had woken her up with a start. By the time she’d made it down stairs and thrown open her front door, the early morning street was empty again.

 

But there was a box on her porch. Small and heavy, wrapped in brown paper and tied with tweed. Just two words sat scrawled in thick, black ink on the beige, threaded paper.

 

//

 

Clarke holds the coffee close to her chest and doesn’t participate in the rest of the conversation.

 

//

 

_It’s lilac._

_-L_

The note read. 

 


	2. Chapter 2

“Do you remember that day in middle school when you came home with that book of poetry and read that one about the sea?”

 

Clarke watches Lexa’s hands still over top her keyboard, but she remains infuriatingly silent.

 

“The one with the girl and it was like really sad.”

 

Lexa shakes her head.

 

“Come on, you remember. She like dies by the sea or something. And you really loved it. You read it all the time—“

 

“Why do you want to know, Clarke.”

 

“I was just thinking about that day.”

 

She watches Lexa clench up tight and go so rigid she wonders if it hurts.

 

//

 

Lexa does this thing when she’s upset. Clarke lashes out, but Lexa gets small and quiet, and skittish.

 

//

 

Lexa gets up and goes for the door.

 

“Where are you going?”

 

“Laundry.”

 

//

 

Lexa has an affinity for two words written on notes. Clarke wakes up from a nap and shuffles over to her desk to check her emails.

But there’s a yellow sticky note in the middle of her screen.

 

//

 

“Hey, have you ever heard of the poem, Annabel Lee? Edgar Allen—”

 

“Poe. Yeah. Why?"

 

“Just thinking about it.”

 

“Isn’t that Lexa’s favorite?” Raven tosses it off like it’s nothing.

 

Clarke, again, very nearly chokes on her drink. The alcohol stings on the way up.

 

“Hey, you see that girl over there? I’m thinking about trying to hit on her…”

 

“Wait, wait, wait." Clarke waves her hands in Raven's face. "Pause. Pump the breaks.”

 

Raven rolls her eyes. Much like the way Lexa had this morning when she’d asked her what was so great about such a tragic story. “The breaks are pumped, Clarke. Speak. Before you give yourself an aneurism.”

 

Clarke balks at her. “How’d you remember that it’s Lexa’s favorite?”

 

//

 

And then there’s this thing that Raven does. When she doesn’t want Clarke to know something.

 

//

 

“I saw your mom today. She was looking mighty—“

 

“No you didn’t and please don’t talk about her ass again. It’s weird. Also. You’re changing the subject.”

 

//

 

Raven leaves her sitting on the couch with her dick in her hand.

 

//

 

“She was my friend too, Clarke. Maybe if you weren’t so busy trying to remember why you hate her in the first place, you’d remember that Lexa likes that poem because her sister read it to while they waited for their parents to wake-up. It was the only book in the hospital lobby. Remember?”

 

//

 

This time, when the bed across the room squeaks, and the panting starts, and then the curse words and the frantic footsteps sound--even when the things fall off the desk and the door bangs open, flooding the room with light, Clarke lays awake.

 

She lays awake until Lexa comes shuffling back, three hours later with puffy, red eyes and a shirt that clings damply to her body.

 

//

 

There’s this thing Clarke does sometimes, when she doesn’t know what else to do. When her heart hurts and she feels too many things all at once like anger and resentment and sadness and loss and hatred.

 

And not hatred at all.

 

//

 

Lexa goes stiff as a board when Clarke crawls into her bed. She lays down on her back, her shoulder just barely grazing Lexa’s back, and waits until she feels her relax.

 

“It was many a year ago, in a kingdom by the sea," she whispers. "That a maiden there lived whom you know, by the name of Annabel Lee.”

 

When Lexa’s back shakes, Clarke turns on her side and presses her hand in the warm, damp space between her shoulder blades.

 

“And this maiden she lived with no other thoughts than to love and be loved by me…and...she..yeah, I don’t remember the rest. I tried to memorize it…thought you might like to hear it...” She presses her forehead to the nape of Lexa’s neck and sighs. “I don’t know what you’re going through, Lexa, but…I’m so sorry you’re hurting.”

 

Lexa doesn’t move or make a sound, and eventually Clarke goes back to her own bed.

 

//

 

“You did what?”

 

“I know. I know.” Clarke throws her face into her hands and groans. “And she’s like totally ignoring me.”

 

“Of course she is,” Octavia chuckles, “that’s Lexa’s thing.”

 

“And you got into her bed.”

 

“Yes, thank you, Raven. I’d forgotten that in the five seconds since I just told you. I appreciate the reminder.”

 

“I’m just saying. You made her feel vulnerable. So now she’s going to shut you out. That’s her thing.”

 

“Yeah and my thing is to freaking cuddle when she’s vulnerable because she used to be my best friend in the entire world and that’s what we did. So like what do you expect me to do?”

 

“I don’t know…maybe not invade her personal space after she comes into the room crying?”

 

Clarke groans again, loud and long and dramatic. “Why do our things have to be so fucking contradictory?” She says it into the table she’s smacked her head onto and no on answers her. When she looks back up, she could almost punch the sympathetic frowns right off of their faces.

 

//

 

“So I’m sorry I got in your bed the other night.”

 

Lexa doesn’t acknowledge her presence at all. Not even so much as a twitch.

 

Clarke taps on the text book Lexa's reading and has to bite back a smile when Lexa’s wrinkles her nose at the intrusion. “You know you used to do that in middle school too.”

 

Lexa finally looks up at her. “What?”

 

She hadn’t been expecting that. She shakes her head quickly and looks down at her hands. “Nothing.”

 

She can feel Lexa staring at her. This thing she does with her eyes where she peers into your soul and analyzes your every cell down to its tiny nuclear center, dissecting you for what makes you, you, until you feel completely unraveled and revealed.

 

“Is there something you wanted, Clarke?”

 

Clarke grips onto her phone, her knuckles going white. She feels herself going hard. Going brittle. She hates the way Lexa can just shut off. The way she just shut off that day in middle school and left her with a hole in her heart the color of Lexa’s eyes and the shape of her smile and the depth of her hugs.

 

//

 

“I think you have an anger management problem.” Some girl had told her that once. The week after Lexa ignored her in the hall for the first time. It came hot on the heels of a bad test grade, and a spilled lunch tray too.

 

And so she smacked the girl. Right in the face.

 

When she got detention, she was almost glad for it. She’d heard rumors that Lexa had been floating in and out of it.

 

But Lexa wasn’t there and Clarke never really did learn to manager her anger.

 

//

 

“You can be a real bitch, you know that?”

 

Lexa doesn’t even flinch. “It’s not cute when the pot calls the kettle black.”

 

“I was just trying to be nice.”

 

“Maybe you should stick to things a little bit more your speed.” Lexa calmly closes her textbook and leaves Clarke in the middle of the library with her jaw on the floor.

 

//

 

There’s this thing that they both do. When they’re angry and hurting and confused. When they’re tired and burdened and so very sick of each other. Sick of missing each other.

 

//

 

“We’re not talking.”

 

“Is that supposed to be news?”

 

Lexa glares at Anya so hard her jaw pops.

 

“I’m just saying. You and Clarke haven’t been talking since middle school.”

 

“You know what I mean,” she grumbles, shoveling salad into her mouth as Anya watches her with amused confusion.

 

“I don’t actually, but I gave up trying to figure you out the day you learned to read Plutarch in German. So.”

 

“I can’t read Plutarch in German.”

 

“Coulda fooled me.”

 

“I had a dictionary.”

 

Anya rolls her eyes with a chuckle. “God, you’re such a nerd. Are you sure we’re related?”

 

“We’re not related.”

 

Anya pinches her on the forearm, demanding her eyes. “Maybe not by blood. But you’re still my little sister.” She pinches harder when Lexa looks away for a moment. Lexa yelps and sends her another stinging glare. But Anya goes unfazed. “I mean it. We’re family, okay? The fact that our parents forgot to tell us we were adopted before they kicked the bucket kinda makes that a little complicated. Legally. But in the way that it counts…that’s not complicated. You’re my sister and I love you.”

 

Lexa pulls her arm away and pouts. “You’re being weird.”

 

“No, you’re just allergic to feelings.”

 

“Yeah and who do you think I get that from.”

 

Anya grins as she stands and collects their plates. “That’s right. And don’t you ever forget it, pipsqueak.”

 

//

 

Anya’s there when she wakes up on her couch gasping. She threads her fingers through Lexa’s hair and whispers about her day and the funny lady who carried her dog on her shoulder through the grocery store. She tells her about her bus ride and the cute little boy who got his yo-yo wrapped around her ankle. None of it matters and all of it does, because it makes Lexa remember that she’s alive, and then the breathing thing becomes a little easier.

 

//

 

Clarke is halfway to livid, but mostly just terrified when Lexa walks back into her dorm room after a week of being MIA.

 

She tries to remind herself that whatever it is that’s going on inside of Lexa, whatever it’s been since middle school, has made her fragile and flighty. She tries to remind herself that words hurt just as much as fists do. Especially when it comes to Lexa.

 

She digs her nails into her palms and doesn’t saying anything for at least two hours.

 

//

 

Lexa is halfway out of her desk, shrugging a jacket on when Clarke jerks out of her semi-conscious nap. “Where are you going?”

 

Lexa looks at her like she has three heads and doesn’t say anything.

 

“Did you hear me? I asked—“

 

“Oh no, I heard you. I’m just trying to figure out what makes you think you have the right to that information.”

 

Clarke slides off the bed and crosses her arms. She feels both powerful in her anger and tiny in her sadness. “You scared me. You were gone for a week and I had no idea what happened to you.”

 

“I was at Anya’s.”

 

“Yeah, I know that now.”

 

“You could have called her.”

 

“She changed her number.”

 

“Well, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. I just needed some space.”

 

“No, you just needed to run away. Because that’s what you’re good at. Isn’t it?”

 

Lexa has the audacity to scoff at her as she turns to leave.

 

“Hey! We’re not fucking finished!”

 

It startles both of them—the volume. The anger. The tears.

 

Lexa turns back around slowly. Eyes somehow both angry and gentle. Defeated. “What do you want from me, Clarke? I don’t know what you want from me.”

 

//

 

Clarke does this thing. When she’s heartbroken.

 

//

 

“I hate you,” she whispers.

 

//

 

Lexa never flinches. She never really pays any mind to the bullshit that comes out of Clarke’s mouth most of the time.

 

But there’s this thing she does when she’s listening. Really listening.

 

//

 

When Lexa peels her gaze up off the floor, and looks straight at Clarke, her eyes are wet. She nods and let’s out a breath that shakes so hard Clarke can hear it.

 

“I know. I know you do, Clarke.”

 

 


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Tw: Mention of attempted sexual assault. Starts with: "Out of the corner of her eyes." Ends after: "Lexa does this thing when she's scared."

 

“Can you like turn the other way or something? Your puppy eyes are making it hard to have fun.”

 

Clarke blinks when she feels the slight nudge to her shoulder. She looks up at Raven blankly. “What?”

 

“Seriously?”

 

“I’m sorry. I know, I know. I’m being lame.”

 

“Is this about Lexa again?”

 

Really, she needs to reconsider liquid consumption around her friends. She coughs as the alcohol goes down the wrong way. “I’m sorry?”

 

“Don’t play stupid. I’ve been your friend since elementary school. I know when you’re pining. You haven’t stopped staring at Lexa since you got here.”

 

“I’m most definitely _not_ pining.” She must say it with enough vitriol because Raven immediately backs off and nods, handing her her own drink as if it might sooth the dragon. She sighs. "Sorry. I’m just annoyed. She thinks I hate her.”

 

“But…you do. Don’t you?”

 

//

 

Clarke does this thing when she’s trying to avoid things.

 

When her mother had asked her to consider seeing a grief counselor after finding her passed out drunk on her bedroom floor her sophomore year of high school, Clarke had gone out the next night and had her first kiss.

 

When Lexa graduated from high school, Clarke gave Finn her virginity.

 

The morning she’d walked into her dorm room on move-in day and found Lexa sitting on her bed with her face in a book, she let Raven drag her along to a party at the Frat houses, and let a guy go down on her until she was numb.

 

//

 

Out of the corner of her eyes, with a girl licking into her belly button and lime juice dripping down her chin, she sees Lexa stumble down a hallway off the living room. When an arm reaches out from a bedroom and latches onto her wrist, she disappears.

 

//

 

The girl that slides up her body and takes the lime from between her teeth smells like vanilla.

 

//

 

There’s a tongue practically down her throat by the time she registers that the arm had been just a little too big. A little too hairy.

 

//

 

Anger management. That’d never been her strong suit.

 

//

 

She’s pretty sure her hand is broken by the time Bellamy and Monty manage to pull her off the asshole. They attempt to drag her away, but she kicks and screams until they let her go. In seconds, she has Lexa curled into her arms, rocking her and coaxing water down her throat to help ease the drugs out of her system.

 

 

//

 

Clarke goes with her to Campus Police to file the report. She doesn’t question it when Lexa lets her hold her hand.

 

The detective is blunt. To the point. “Did he touch you?”

 

Lexa squeezes Clarke's hand as her eyes remain fixed on the detective. She shakes her head. “He never got the chance.”

 

//

 

Lexa does this thing when she’s scared.

 

//

 

“Clarke?” It’s small and sniffly and Clarke almost misses it. She sits up on Anya’s lumpy couch and squints out into the dark expanse of the living room.

 

She hears Lexa’s shuffling footsteps, and slowly, ever so slowly, her hunched outline comes into view.

 

“Hey, I’m here.” She stands and meets Lexa somewhere near the kitchen. A beam of silver moonlight catches a tear on Lexa’s cheek. It takes her breath away.

 

When Lexa wraps her arms around her waist and buries her face into her shoulder, Clarke lets out a sob she didn’t know she’d been holding in.

 

“I’m sorry,” she chokes out, surprised by the overwhelming ache rattling through her. “You’re the one who should be upset. I’m sorry.”  

 

Lexa wordlessly squeezes her tighter.

 

“I was so scared.”

 

Lexa nods. And does this thing she used to do when Clarke was six and crying over a scraped knee. Or eight and upset over her first bad grade. Or—

 

Lexa presses the smallest of kisses to her neck.

 

//

 

By the time Clarke wakes up, the sheets are cold and the strands of brown hair that’d been tickling her nose all night are gone.

 

Her heart startles into hyper drive and she tumbles out of bed, barefoot and freezing.

 

//

 

Lexa looks up at her with bedhead and sleepy eyes, a spoon halfway to her mouth, stalled midair by Clarke’s clamoring entrance.

 

Breathing hard, Clarke takes a moment just to stare at her. “I thought—“

 

Lexa nods and puts her spoon down. Quietly she slides off the stool and crosses to her, enveloping her in a hug as soon as she’s close enough.

 

//

 

They do this thing where they pretend nothing ever happens.

 

Except weeks later when Lexa startles awake and runs out of the room, Clarke follows her.

 

//

 

“You don’t have to do this alone, you know,” she murmurs as she carefully crosses towards the couch in the common room where Lexa sits with her chin propped on her knees. “Whatever it is that’s keeping you up at night.”

 

Lexa doesn’t act surprised to see here there. In fact, she looks resigned.

 

Lexa’s little balled up form dips when Clarke plops down on the couch, years worth of exhausted. She rests her head on the back of the frame and stares up at the ceiling until Lexa starts to fidget. “I’m not going anywhere so you might as well talk.”

 

“You always were stubborn,” Lexa sighs, unfurling.

 

“You used to like that about me.”

 

Lexa stands and offers her hand. When Clarke looks at her like she’s lost her mind, she chuckles. “Lets go for a walk?”

 

“You’re in your PJs.”

 

Lexa grins. “Didn’t stop us in middle school.”

 

“We were neighbors. We only walked like the fifty feet that separated our houses.”

 

“So now we’ll walk the fifty feet that separates this from the next dorm building.”

 

“It’s cold out.”

 

Lexa sighs and her head droops. “Do you want to talk or not?”

 

“Is that what we’re going to do? Or are we going to walk silently next to each other and throw out insults when we get uncomfortable.”

 

“Okay, you know what. Forget it. I was trying, but you obviously—“

 

Clarke grabs her hand and holds it tight. She stares up at Lexa like it’s suddenly the only thing keeping her alive. “No we’ll walk. We can walk,” she says all too quickly.

 

//

 

They don’t really walk so much as they lie in the thick grass of the quad up near the astronomy building.

 

“This is the darkest place on campus,” Lexa murmurs.

 

“So the telescope can see the stars well. Yeah.” Clarke turns her head. Her stomach flips at the familiarity of Lexa’s pale, blue silhouette. “Remember when we used to do this during the summer?”

 

“You never could shut up about the different constellations.”

 

“I liked telling you about them.”

 

Lexa grins. “I’m the one who taught you them.”

 

Clarke rolls onto her side and props her head on her hand. “I know. That’s why I liked telling you about them.”

 

Lexa looks up at her skeptically.

 

“I wanted to impress you,” she murmurs.

 

//

 

“You told everyone my parents died.”

 

“What?”

 

Lexa remains on her back. Eyes fixed on the sky. “Eighth grade. You told everyone I was an orphan. That hurt.”

 

Clarke licks her lip, then chews on it. “But you are...”

 

“It wasn’t your place.”

 

“I was trying to look out for you.”

 

“It wasn’t your place,” Lexa snaps.

 

Clarke returns to her back with a flop and exhales. “Is that really why this started? Because I spoke out of turn as a twelve-year-old?”

 

“I got bullied for it. All year.”

 

“Fuck.” Clarke closes her eyes. Her fingers drift closer to Lexa’s, but she doesn’t dare let them touch. “I’m so sorry.”

 

Lexa’s silent for a long while. So long, Clarke has to open her eyes to make sure she’s still there. Lexa turns her head, stunning Clarke’s breath with those brilliant, green eyes. “I’m adopted,” she whispers.

 

Clarke blinks. “What?”

 

Lexa nods, returns her face to the sky. “I needed a passport to go visit my aunt in France after the accident. Our CPS agent was trying to help me and Anya get one. That’s how I found out. It turned my whole world upside down. I had so many questions, you know? And I couldn’t even ask my parents about it because they were dead. And then I didn’t know if I could even call them my parents.” She turns to look at Clarke, shiny and big and _green._ “Isn’t that awful? I actually considered discounting everything they’d ever done for me. Just because I was adopted. Talk about speaking ill of the dead.”

 

Clarke grabs Lexa’s hand so fast it makes them both jump.

 

//

 

“It felt like you died with them,” Clarke murmurs, hand still tight around Lexa’s. “I held you every night after it happened because you needed me, but really I needed you. You were my best friend in the whole world and you were falling apart and even still, you were the strong one.”

 

“You’re strong, Clarke,” Lexa sighs. Squeezing on her hand.

 

“Not like you.”

 

“We cope differently.”

 

“You disappeared.”

 

Lexa disengages their hands. Clarke misses the touch only as long as it’s gone for Lexa to wipe at her cheeks. She breathes a little deeper when it returns.

 

“My dad died.” Lexa closes her eyes. Clenches them. “I tried to be there for you when you lost your parents, even when you pushed me away. But when my dad died, you—“

 

“I abandoned you.”

 

It settles between them like a breath of relief. And then for a while the only sounds heard are the distant whooshing cars down the main road and the rhythmic chirping of the crickets.

 

“You didn’t even text me.”

 

“I loved him too.”

 

Clarke furrows in confusion. “What?”

 

“After my parents died, your parents took me in. I loved them. I loved him.”

 

The tiniest of sobs escapes out of Clarke before she can catch it. Lexa presses her forehead into her shoulder and nuzzles ever so gently.

 

 “I’m sorry.”

 

Clarke turns. “Is that why you stop talking to me?”

 

“The human form can only handle so much pain, Clarke.”

 

“Was I really causing you that much pain?” She doesn’t mean to take offense, but it creeps into the sharp edges of her voice.

 

Lexa turns to meet her gaze, their faces so close. “I loved them. My parents. Then I loved yours. Your dad. All of them. And...you. I loved you so much,” she whispers. “If something were to have happened to you too…” She doesn’t finish her thought and her eyes return to the sky. Clarke rolls back onto her side and stares down at her, heart thudding.

 

//

 

 _I_ _was a child and _she_  was a child,_

_In this kingdom by the sea,_

_But we loved with a love that was more than love—_

_I and my Annabel Lee—_

_With a love that the wingèd seraphs of Heaven_

_Coveted her and me._

_And this was the reason that, long ago,_

_In this kingdom by the sea,_

_A wind blew out of a cloud, chilling_

_My beautiful Annabel Lee;_

_So that her highborn kinsmen came_

_And bore her away from me,_

_To shut her up in a sepulchre_

_In this kingdom by the sea._

 

//

 

“You didn’t want me to hurt you.”

 

“I didn't want to _lose_ you." 

 

"I'm not the one who left."

 

"Love is weakness, Clarke. It doesn't matter who left first. It hurts all the same. Love is weakness.”

 

Clarke grabs Lexa’s hand and pulls it to her chest. “Love is the only thing that matters, Lexa. Love is the only thing that balances out all the pain.”

 

//

 

There’s this thing Lexa does. Where she says something that makes Clarke’s heart skip a beat. Sometimes it’s nice. Sometimes it hurts.

 

//

 

“Sometimes love makes it worse.”

 

//

 

Clarke falls to her back again with a sigh. She can’t argue. She can’t tell Lexa’s she’s wrong, because she’s not. Sometimes love makes it so much worse.

 

//

 

“I found them. This summer.”

 

“Who?”

 

“My birth parents.”

 

Clarke turns. She tries to clock Lexa’s expression, but she’s doing that infuriating thing where she gives away nothing.

 

“I started looking freshman year. My parents didn’t leave much in terms of documentation, so there wasn’t much to go on. And the agency they adopted me through had since shut down. I was going to give up. The end of sophomore year. But Anya told me to try again and we put our inheritance money together to hire a private investigator.”

 

Lexa pauses and Clarke finds her fingers again. Lexa doesn’t offer much resistance, so she intertwines them and gives a gentle squeeze.

 

“He couldn’t find anything either at first. But then in July he told me he found the contact information for my father’s brother. My uncle, I guess. I tried emailing, but he would never respond, and one day I just kind of lost it. I drove all the way to Cape Cod and got on a ferry to Nantucket to storm his house.” She chuckles, but Clarke can hear that it’s anything but funny. “I got all that way just to find out that he’s a scumbag slob who can barely get through the day. An alcoholic too. He shoved a piece of paper with an address on it into my hands and told me to fuck off. I didn’t care. I didn’t need him. I just wanted to find my parents. So I took it and I…”

 

Clarke can see her struggling to swallow. She almost wants to reach out and run her hand gently along the smooth skin of Lexa’s throat. Ease the hard lump making it hard for her to speak.

 

“I practiced a speech,” Lexa whispers, then chuckles. “All the way there I practiced this grand speech about how I was their daughter and I forgave them and all I wanted was to get to know them. No strings attached.” She gives Clarke’s hand a squeeze without really knowing it. Clarke squeezes back. “I imagined myself standing on their porch. A great big New England porch that wrapped around back with a view of the ocean.”

 

When Lexa pauses, she pauses for a long time. As if the story is done. To her, maybe it is. Clarke scoots closer and gives her hand another gentle squeeze. “They didn’t take it well?”

 

“Hm?”

 

“I take it things didn’t go well…when you found them?”

 

“Oh.” Lexa blinks rapidly, disoriented. “Um no, they…they’re—” She turns to look at her. “The address was to a cemetery.”

 

Clarke’s heart falls to her feet and it makes her jerk over into Lexa’s space. She pulls her into a hug and doesn’t let go, even when Lexa stiffens. Even when she squirms and pushes against her, crying and telling her that love is weakness and feelings are useless and that she shouldn’t be so stupid, stupid, stupid.

 

She holds her until Lexa finally stills and breaks down into her chest. Thick, heavy, wet sobs, staining into her shirt.  

 

Clarke holds her and whispers into her hair. She strokes her back and kisses her wet cheeks and promises she’s not alone.

 

When Lexa pulls back and looks at her with her puffy lower lip and her brilliant, shining eyes, Clarke can’t help herself.  She leans in, and then Lexa kisses her. She kisses her and Clarke has her eyes closed and her heart in her throat, her hand tangled in Lexa’s dew-damp hair and her leg aching from it’s odd position under Lexa’s shaking body.

 

She’s not prepared for Lexa to lean into it. She’s not prepared for Lexa to slide her hands into her shirt and grip onto her bare hips for dear life. She’s not prepared for any of it, but she finds herself doing this thing. And Lexa does it back, and the her whole world is spinning and she remembers to pull back to breathe.

 

//

 

Lexa kisses her again after they’ve both taken several swallows of air.

 

//

 

“This isn’t weakness,” Clarke murmurs, her hands on Lexa’s cheeks. “This can’t be weakness.”

 

Lexa burrows into her neck and latches onto the collar of her shirt. “I can’t lose you too.”

 

Clarke squeezes her tight. “You won’t. You won’t.”

 

//

 

Lexa does this thing in the morning. Her hair is soft against Clarke’s cheek. Her body warm and pliant in her arms. She stretches herself into awareness in Clarke’s hold and turns to run her fingers along Clarke’s cheek. She kisses her. Just a ghost of a kiss. A slight brush of her lips across Clarke’s. “Hey,” she whispers. She kisses her again. “I love you.”

 

//

 

Clarke’s favorite thing, is when Lexa does this thing where she curls into her arms and whispers that she loves her. Clarke smiles in her barely-there awareness. “I love you too,” she murmurs.

 

“Yeah?”

 

Clarke forces her eyes open, squinting against the morning sun. She smiles at the way the light does this thing behind Lexa’s hair. Lighting her up into this ethereal little being. All bright green eyes and soft, brown hair. “Yeah. I do. I love you. I’m _in_ love with you. I love you in all the ways it’s possible to love someone.”

 

“Even with all my…things?”

 

Clarke smiles. “Especially with all your things.”

 

//

 

_But our love it was stronger by far than the love_

_Of those who were older than we—_

_Of many far wiser than we—_

_And neither the angels in Heaven above_

_Nor the demons down under the sea_

_Can ever dissever my soul from the soul_

_Of the beautiful Annabel Lee;_


End file.
